Welcome to my Metazoic site! This site discusses the existence of the creatures to come along after humans will be extinct. I first became interested in a world after man when I acquired my first copy of Dougal Dixon's After Man: A Zoology of the Future in 1992. However, I unwittingly created creatures that did not exist from the time I was about 8 years old. But it was after I obtained a copy of that book (now a collector's item) that I decided to take these same creatures I created as a child and make them more realistic in an evolutionary sense. Though it may be hard for a lot of us to grasp, humans will soon become extinct. One of the biggest factors of how this will happen is the current overpopulation rate. Which is why I don't contribute to the population. I created this world with little more than mammals fulfilling all ecological niches with the help of some friends. I even gave the era of the age after man a name, I called it the Metazoic, derived from the words for "After-era" (Meta, meaning after, and zoic meaning era). We are now in the Cenozoic era. To view all the animals I have created since I began this project, you can go to the "Meet the Mammals" section of this site. To discuss your own ideas about what you think will happen in the future world, and share your ideas with others, please feel free to leave a comment. One more thing, some of you may find this site quite offensive, and you have a right to your own opinion. But please respect my right to have an opinion too. I'm not saying there is no GOD, I believe it was HIM who got the ball rolling. But I believe after that, evolution took over. There is so much more evidence of evolution than there is of creation. Even that going on right under our noses. Other than that, enjoy yourself and visit our many links.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Future Chiropters

This is an on-going discussion on the Spec. Evolution forum and I just wanted to give a little bit of my own hypothesis on this subject. In my view, bats will take over from birds. Today, it is the pteropods that are the most intelligent forms, so it is my opinion that they will most likely be the ones to "muscle-out" birds in the competition. Birds are not going to be an easy group to defeat. There are some things that could wipe out birds and leave that niche open to bats. Nobody really knows what wiped out 99% of all living things at the end of the Permian period. It is thought that increased volcanic activity is among the culprits. It could happen again. The same thing could happen to wipe out birds. Let's say bats survive because they live in caves. Only 3 families of birds inhabit caves, whereas almost all bats shelter in caves. So IMHO, bats would survive. This is of course one of those "it could happen this way" kind of scenarios. Bats are among the most successful animals of all. The only thing they would need is to learn how to walk around on their hind legs. In the Metazoic, I figure pteropods (also known as Megachiropters) will fill in these niches.

At the end of the Permian Period, there were but a few survivers. Among these were dinosaurs and synapsids. Among the synapsids was a pig-sized Lystrosaurus that survived, and became the prototype for all mammals today. If a large animal like that could survive an extinction event that killed off 99% of all other creatures, then there is no reason some other rather good-sized creatures couldn't survive again, and I'm thinking bats could be among the species to survive, and even take over. Birds are small, and can live on limited amounts of food, but then again, so can bats. Bats can gradually grow to larger proportions. In the Metazoic, there are even flightless bats. These bats, I call them the Cryptochiropters, are more monkey-like and live in what is today Hawaii. They have lost the use of their last 3 digits and the thumb and index fingers have become their forefeet, same arrangement on their hind feet, and they use these for walking, not flying. This family evolved off the pteropods, but went down a different evolutionary route. Most of these animals are tree-dwellers, but there are some ground-dwellers as well that graze on grasses, and watch out overhead for the vicious Cercomoloch. Cercomoloch I figure will be a giant, predatory pteropod that feeds on other animals, killing them with their talons, like in modern eagles.

Well, who knows what can happen, birds are adaptable, but then so are bats. Dunkleosteus was a great survivor in the age of fish. But they were unexpectedly muscled out by sharks. One would have thought sharks, whose internal body structure is made up of cartilage, would have died off hundreds of millions of years ago. But they survived and beat out Dunkleosteus!! Sometimes evolution and nature take unexpected paths.